Thursday, 8 January 2015

There is a lot to be said for a contrarian mind. In fact, as Douglas Wilson has observed, in a prevailing secular humanist clime, having a contrarian mind is arguably a basic requirement for Christian living.

Urbane contrarians, particularly those with a merry impishness, are national treasures. He is an example:

Dying of cancer is the "best death" and we should "stop wasting billions trying to cure" it, a leading doctor has said. Dr
Richard Smith, a former editor of the British Medical Journal, said
that cancer allowed people to say goodbye and prepare for death and was
therefore preferable to sudden death, death from organ failure or "the
long, slow death from dementia". . . .

"You can
say goodbye, reflect on your life, leave last messages, perhaps visit
special places for a last time, listen to favourite pieces of music,
read loved poems, and prepare, according to your beliefs, to meet your
maker or enjoy eternal oblivion," Dr Smith wrote in a blog published for the BMJ, a journal he edited until 2004. "This is, I recognise, a romantic view of dying, but it is
achievable with love, morphine, and whisky. But stay away from
overambitious oncologists, and let's stop wasting billions trying to
cure cancer, potentially leaving us to die a much more horrible death,"
he wrote.